“Blackberry tart for the pretty lady? Fresh and sweet.”
Blackberry was her favorite variety of pie, tart, or jam. And it did smell maddeningly enticing, which was a beyond-weird thing to be distracted by right now. This had to be a hoax, maybe pulled off by people she’d gone to school with. And yet…
“I’ve heard your voice before.” She stood slowly, scanning the darkness, trying to pin down the shifting shadows. “Or voices like yours. When I was a kid.”
“Did she?” The new voice, higher than the other, sounded delighted.
“Has the lady been looking for us?” the first said.
“I have.” Her heart thudded in her throat. “Who are you?”
“I think the lady means what are you.”
Holy shit. Skye swallowed. “We’ve called you the Teeny-tinies, my sister and me. But we don’t know what you’d call yourselves.”
Many voices laughed now, in pleasure, it sounded like.
“Lady wants to see us?”
“Skye. My name’s Skye. Yes, I would. Please.”
“We are not so teeny tiny. Though we can be if we want.” The shadow took shape as it crept head-first down the trunk of the tree, into the range of the blue mushroom light.
A chill skittered up Skye’s flesh. The creature reminded her of a giant spider, dark and spindly-legged. But she counted only four limbs, and two eyes gleaming at her, so, more like Gollum than a spider. Still creepy.
If it was Gollum, though, it was a Gollum made of twisted sticks and clumps of lichen, or some kind of natural camouflage that had evolved to look like that. She and Livy had pictured the Teeny-tinies as truly tiny, little enough to stand on the palm of your hand. This creature, while still smaller than her, certainly outsized that imaginary being. It was almost as big as Skye had been herself as a child.
Others approached too, descending trees and crawling across the ground. Her feet felt rooted to the earth, and her breath came shallow and fast. She looked behind her, and a new rush of fear dizzied her. The lights of Bellwater’s streets, shops, and docks, modest in number though they were, should have been visible through the trees. Instead only a dark forest stood there, stretching away into the indigo night. Shadows moved toward her, and fuzzy lights floated in the air or bobbed across the ground. Decidedly not the lights of Bellwater. No lightbulbs behaved like that.
“You see us. You like us?”
Skye pivoted to face the closest creature. A tarnished ring glinted on a string around its neck, and a few small, white shells dangled from its thin hair. Those touches of human-like decoration gave her hope. Anyway, as they’d pointed out, she had come looking for them. She had been curious, and still was.
She nodded. “What are you, then?”
“We have many names. Most commonly ‘goblin.’” The creature, the goblin, smiled, and Skye tried not to shudder. Its teeth were pointed and long.
“Goblin.” She cleared her throat. “Well then, sure. I’ve heard of you.”
Another goblin emerged from the shadows on a trunk on her left, at face level like the first. “She is a keeper.”
“Oh yes,” the first said. “We would like her. We like someone new once in a while.” The goblin pulled a pastry from a dirt-colored sack hanging around its body. It extended the pastry toward Skye. “Blackberry tart?”
Despite its disgusting storage location, the tart looked luscious, its crust golden, its scent warm and buttery and so pungent that Skye could nearly taste the flaky shell, could almost feel the sweet cooked berries melting on her tongue.
She closed her teeth with a deliberate click. Magic. Had to be. Everyone knew you shouldn’t go biting into fruit offered to you by magical creatures in the woods, even if you’d thought until just five minutes ago that such stories were, you know, only stories.
But her head swam pleasantly, as if she were drunk, and it was hard to say what she meant. “I don’t know,” she said. “What does it do?”
“It helps you join us.” The goblin nudged the tart closer. “Have a little party with us. Fun. Right?”
“I…I’m not…”
But as Skye groped for what she intended to say, someone shoved her head from behind, knocking her forward. Fast as a pouncing cat, the other goblin pushed the blackberry tart into her face. Sticky filling invaded her mouth, so hot it burned her tongue. Juice and crumbs smeared down her chin. Her throat made a muffled scream, but instinctively she swallowed the bite. Her arms flailed, feeling as heavy as if she were swimming. Little hands, rough like twigs, caught hold of her in several places at once.
She fell and never hit the ground. The goblins carried her crowd-surf-style. Everything became a dream; she couldn’t respond the way she wanted to.
Afterward she still remembered what she saw and what they did before releasing her. Even though she couldn’t speak of it.
CHAPTER THREE
KIT TROMPED INTO THE FOREST. IT WAS DRIZZLING, TURNING THE EVENING DARK EVEN EARLIER THAN USUAL, AND HE wore a rain parka over his leather jacket and flannel shirt. The large box under his arm had a spare parka over it to keep it dry. Inside the box was a milk steamer, stolen from a home goods store in Olympia with the blessing of his magical immunity. He would have bought it, but seven years of scrounging gold and other junk for the goblins had cleaned him out. A small-town auto repairer and part-time chainsaw-carving artist didn’t make all that much cash. If only their magic could have topped up his bank account instead of granting him license to steal.
He had at least left a five-dollar bill on the shelf in the store, where the milk steamer had sat. He always tried to offer what he could.
He whistled in the darkness of the woods. They whistled back. A path appeared: broken oyster shells on the ground this time, their pure white glowing in the gloom.
When Redring dropped down and morphed into her bathrobe-and-pajama-clad form, Kit removed the spare parka from the box. “Here. Your milk steamer.”
She seized the box and sniffed it. “You said four days. It’s been a week.”
“Well, I have a life. Now you can have lattes. There. Can I go?”
“Don’t you worry we might get up to mischief when you take so long?”
A few others giggled in the trees.
Kit narrowed his eyes. “Should I worry?” He’d heard nothing in town about anyone being attacked in the woods, but then, people didn’t always say anything right away. In fact, in the few past cases he’d heard about, people had been enchanted in such a way that they couldn’t say anything about it.
“Oh no, we are angels,” Redring assured.
The others cackled.
Kit turned halfway to go, but pointed at her. “I better not hear of anything. You’re getting what you want, you just leave everyone else the hell alone.”
“But we always want new things.” Redring’s tone started as a wheedle, then turned sinister. “You aren’t our boss, Sylvain. Only our liaison.”